Tulsa Queen
by AlisonHell
Summary: "In February of 1946, my mother- Karen Curtis' sister Patricia- went on a joy ride with a wanted man." Lettie Barnett, the Curtis boys' cousin, has secrets. Secrets of her own, and the one she shared with Darry, Soda, and Ponyboy's mother. Language, substance use, some material may not be appropriate for young teens. And that's all I'm going to say about that.
1. Chapter 1

SE Hinton owns the Outsiders. Here I am monkeying around in her backyard again. "Tulsa Queen" is a song by Emmylou Harris.

**Tulsa Queen**

_She's come a long way, got a longer way to go..._

One-

My mother's sister Karen took me to the doctor with her on the day she was told she had six months to live. She must have suspected already that the news was going to be bad. She didn't tell my mother there was another appointment or that the test results were back, just asked could mom to call me in sick to school that day to help her with some errands.

I sat next to her- unaware of what was coming- as the doctor explained to her the rate at which the cancer was spreading and that there was nothing more that could be done. He told her six months. As it turned out, she- and my uncle as well- had three.

She didn't tell my mother, her husband or their sons either, but she started preparing me for everything that day. After the appointment, she drove us to Broken Arrow to a diner where I'd never been before, and laid a big yellow envelope out in front of me.

The first thing she said to me since leaving the doctor's office was: "Do you know how to balance a checkbook?"

"Can't they operate, Aunt Karen? Can't they cut it out or something?"

She shushed me.

"It's too late for that, honey. It's a blessing at all that I have a little time. I'd like to spend some time with you so you'll be ready."

That's the way things were in 1964. The men made the money and decided how it was spent, but there was usually a woman behind the curtain doing the books. My aunt knew every dime that came and went from her house- right down to the pocket change that my Uncle Darrel spent on a couple of beers every Friday night. She worried over our finances and cheated herself out of the allowance he gave her for extras. There was never any extra. My aunt- just like my mom- spent her fun money on new shoes for us kids and bread.

She was a kind woman, but there was something cold about the way she handled the business of turning over the reins to me. As a kid- I was nineteen at the time- I understood this to mean that she didn't entirely have the faith that I could do it. Her two oldest boys knew how to raise some hell, but it was me she and my mother always called the wild child. I was no more feral than Darry and Soda were, but there was a different standard of behavior for girls.

"Yes, ma'am," I said. "I know how to balance a checkbook. They showed us in Home Ec."

We ordered lunch, and she went down her list of all the things I knew or needed to know: the name of the bank she used, how much was left on the mortgage, the names of secretaries at the utilities companies- the people to talk to first when a bill as going to be late. Then she started into what needed to be done with the boys. She began with Darry.

"Aunt Karen, he's in college. He's been on his own for a year. As long as he keeps his scholarship and if he doesn't…what am I supposed to do?"

"He's lonely there. If he thinks any of this is weighing on the family, he'll come home. I want you to make sure that doesn't happen. I write to him once a week. I want you to keep doing that. Tell him things are going well, even if you have to lie."

I raised my eyebrows and she avoided looking back at me.

"Don't, Lettie," she said. "He has the best chance of any of them. I won't have anything getting in the way of that."

"He has the best chance because I don't get a chance…" I started, but I stopped. I was arguing with a dying woman. It didn't seem right to be fighting with her.

I did, though. I fought with her plenty all through the fall and the winter- right up until she and my Uncle Darrel died together on New Year's Eve.

* * *

I waited until a week after the funeral to introduce the existence of Aunt Karen's yellow envelope and the news of her already-impending death to my cousin Darry. When I told him she had cancer- that she'd had it for a year and that she would have been gone in another three months- he told me not to tell his brothers. I told him it was a "female" thing, and waited in case he wanted to know more. He didn't.

On the subject of the envelope, he was as dubious about my being given such a responsibility as I had been when Aunt Karen took me to the diner.

He said, "Well, it doesn't matter. They're both gone, and I'm sure not going back to Stillwater now. You may as well turn it over to me."

"She put everything in my name and your dad's. We were both supposed to sign all the checks."

"What the hell for? And why _you_?"

He didn't mean it to sound so harsh. In our extended family, my history and my mom's history leading up to me were common knowledge. It only made sense that he didn't trust me. I wasn't so sure why my Aunt Karen did.

I gave him the most obvious answer: "You didn't think she was going to turn it over to mom, did you? There sure ain't any social workers pounding on her door wanting her to take custody of the boys. She meant for you to be away at school. It don't matter to me anyway. I don't get anything out of it. I'll sign a bunch of blank checks for you, and you can do whatever you want."

"No, no," he was shaking his head- still in disbelief, I imagine. "We'll do what she said. She had a plan. It didn't come down quite as she expected, but when she planned things out- they always worked for the best. We'll do it her way."

…Because we sure as hell weren't going to do it _my_ mom's way. It wasn't even worth mentioning, although it was implied. It had been nearly twenty years since anyone had trusted my mom with anything.


	2. Chapter 2

They belong to Hinton.

This chapter veers far off into OC territory. It's what I do. If you're not a fan of OCs, this might not be the tale for you, but I do happily accept con crit and reviews.

Posting two chapters in quick succession and then leaving you hanging for a week is also what I do.

**Tulsa Queen**

Two-

In February of 1946, my mother- Karen Curtis' sister Patricia- went on a joy ride with a wanted man. She didn't know he was wanted when he picked her up. She knew only that she was pissed at her in-laws and tired of living with them while she was waiting for her husband to get his release from the Army.

She rode 50-some miles and spent two days in a hotel room with a man named William Henry Spence. He was in the shower and she was listening to the radio when the announcement of the manhunt interrupted her daydreaming. The man she was with had told her only that his name was Hank, but she recognized the description of the car.

While he was still in the shower, she dressed and crept out of the hotel room to look at the car's license plates. The numbers matched those from the radio story.

She didn't run to the hotel office or call the police from the pay phone in the parking lot. She just ran- too scared of what would become of her if her husband found out about her little indiscretion in the Tulsa newspapers that he had sent to him at the base. Her in-laws may or not have told him of the other times she'd stepped out, but they had no proof. If she called the police and became a witness, or worse- a hero, there would be proof.

So, she ran like hell. She caught a city bus and rode around for hours. By the time she worked up the nerve to call the police from the bus station with a tip, Hank Spence was long out of the shower and had killed a hotel maid who walked in on him. The clerk heard shots and called the police.

My mother blamed herself for the resulting melee. The hotel clerk was killed and a police officer was injured in the shoot-out that followed. During questioning, Hank Spence was able to name my mother as his companion in Oklahoma City. Unlike him, she hadn't been smart enough to alter her name, and Spence thought that if he named her and she could testify that he wasn't all bad, maybe he could avoid the death penalty.

It was misguided logic. What the introduction of my mother's testimony into Spence's trial did was prove, instead, that he was not insane. He had purposefully concealed the armed robbery of a filling station in Ada because he knew he had done wrong. His being polite and charming enough to work a girl into his car and then work his way up her skirt only proved to the court that he was not under the grips of any kind of temporary madness. He was simply a greedy, manipulative, lecherous man.

William Henry Spence got the death penalty, but he sat on death row for six years. He had five yet to go when I was born, and- because my mother was crazy enough to write to him- he insisted on seeing me a few times. I remember him sitting behind glass and complaining with a smile on his face that I should been named Mona. His mother's name was Mona.

My mother's soldier husband divorced her, but he waited until just after I was born so that I could have his name. A baby, he figured, shouldn't have to pay for her mother's sins. He gave me his name, but my mother and I never went back to the house where his parents lived. I saw him as many times during my childhood as I did Hank Spence, and I remember wishing he was my father instead of Hank. I wished that my mother's feminine wiles were such that he'd bend and let us back into his life, but he wasn't that stupid.

When I was seven, Hank Spence escaped during a prison transport a month before he was finally to be put to death. He disappeared into the Oklahoma hills, and my mother's nightmares nearly shattered her.

I grew up in Brumly- a cow town north of Tulsa- and manufactured my own set of sins. Why my Aunt Karen thought that I was the girl to handle her son's finances in the event of her demise seemed as outlandish to me as it did to Darry.

"Do you still see him...that boy…what was his name…?" Darry asked me. He knew that I didn't, but taking over a household had rendered him cautious- on the road to paranoid.

"No," was all I had to say.

"You're all done with that?"

"All done."

"What about your daddy?"

"Which one?"

He rolled his eyes, exasperated by my sudden refusal to banter.

"The one who escaped from prison, never to be heard from again."

"That's about the size of it- never to be heard from. I ain't seen him since before your old man was in Korea. Mom took me down to Mac because…I don't know. You know how she is…she got all bent out of sorts that your daddy was going over. She thought I needed to re-establish a relationship with a father figure, so naturally she took me to see mine on Death Row. That was it. It didn't go well. I ain't seen him since."

…Which was a bold-faced lie. I'd seen Hank Spence dozens of times. Whenever things got bad for me, he'd show up and make sure they got worse.

"And what about you?" Darry asked. "How did that court thing ever come out?"

He had to know, or at least be able to guess. Clearly, I was not in prison. I told him as much:

"I'm not in prison."

"I can see that. I just…" He stopped and rubbed his face with his hand. "I just got handed this riot act by social services- long list of 'undesirable elements' that I have to keep Soda and Pony clear of. Are you a felon, Lettie?"

I let the 'undesirable element' thing go because I knew that was social services terminology and not Darry's own choice of words.

"I was sixteen, Darry. I did my time at the girl's reformatory. They cleared my record when I turned eighteen. No, I'm not a felon."

He sighed. "I'm sorry, Lettie. I didn't know how else to ask other than just to ask."

"I know."

In 1962, when I was sixteen and long before Rowe vs. Wade, the act of "procuring the death of an unborn child" was second-degree murder in the State of Oklahoma. An adult could do up to four years. I did eighteen months in the reformatory and they turned me loose when I finished a GED.

It was my mother's idea. Or maybe we had the same idea, but it was her who put words to it, when I turned up pregnant. She suggested that I "go to Oklahoma City for a couple of days" and even fronted me the cash. There's a medical school at the University of Oklahoma, and there's always a way to find a med student who "helps girls out" for a little extra spending money. There were so many veiled phrases and coded terms; I'm still surprised I found the guy at all. I was even more surprised when he got caught a couple months later and gave up every girl he could think of to reduce his own sentence. Like my mother with Hank Spence, I hadn't been smart enough to give a fake name at the hotel where I stayed overnight.

I was returned to Oklahoma City, this time to the Girls Industrial School. That's where Hank Spence found me.

"Barnett," one of the matrons called out my last name, my mother's ex-husband's last name, from across the cafeteria. "Your father's here to see you."

I dumped my food and followed her out towards the administrative offices, racking my brain for any reason that Jewell Barnett would have to see me. Turns out, he didn't.

"You got a sister?" The matron asked.

"No, ma'am."

She was shaking her head. "We had a heckuva time figuring out who he was looking for. He kept asking for Mona."

I cursed under my breath, and the matron shot me a warning look.

"He always thought I should be called Mona. It's his mother's name."

"Well, he doesn't seem to have let that go."

She led me to a little visiting room that reminded me of jail, and closed the door behind me. I was sixteen, mind you. I know I cast her a pleading look not to leave me alone with him. The matron bailed out. To her, I was just another incorrigible girl about to get tongue-lashed by her daddy.

It just so happened that my daddy was an escaped death-row murderer.

I hadn't seen him since I was five or six. He didn't seem to have aged, or maybe he just seemed old to me already when I was a little kid. He had black hair and a five o'clock shadow sprouting around his mouth and chin. He hands were what caught my eyes right away- his fingers were gnarled from years of getting bruised and broken in fights. They were the only thing about him that looked a day older than thirty.

"Sir," I said.

That made him grin.

"Don't hear that much," he replied.

He gestured at the empty chair that was waiting for me across the tiny table from him. I sat down- so much more aware than I had been as a child that a few feet was all that separated me from a man deemed fit to send to the electric chair.

I was itching to know how he found me, but not so much that I wanted to start the conversation.

"You're all grown up," he said.

"Not quite, otherwise I'd be in the women's prison."

"Well, from what I hear that's a pretty grown-up crime they got you in here for. I sure ain't the one to be telling anybody about sin, but if you're trying to catch up to me, girl…let me tell you it's no way to live."

"Then why'd you do it?"

He raised his eyebrows, taken aback that I'd ask. Then he grinned again.

"Do what? Do which thing? I got a laundry list, girl. I don't think we have that much time together."

"What do you want?"

"What do you mean- you're my daughter. You used to come see me when I was locked up."

"Mom brought me."

"You want I should go?"

No- when he threatened it like that- no, I didn't. I was lonely. I hadn't seen my mother since I was sentenced. No one came to visit me.

Hank Spence leaned back in his chair again, satisfied.

"I know," he said. "I thought I never wanted to see your mother again- that flakey bitch- but I sure wasn't turning her away when she showed up to see me in Mac. The only ones I ever turned away was the preachers. Don't be talking to any preachers, girl. So, tell me about this…"

He gestured at my belly. I folded my arms across my middle and squirmed.

"Tell me about the boy."

I shook my head.

Hank pushed the subject. "Is he your boyfriend?"

"No, sir. He's just a boy. He's…a little older. I think he's in Mac now for something else. There or Atoka."

"Well, shit, you sure know how to pick 'em."

"Runs in the family."

He grinned at that, but the grin was getting less sinister. It was almost a smile.

"Did he make you do it?"

I furrowed my brow. "Which?"

"Did he force himself on you?"

"No," I said, although I wasn't always sure when I let myself think about it.

"What's his name?"

"Why?"

"Because I'd like to ask him the same question. See if he gets as squirmy over the subject as you do."

I shook my head. If Hank was going to defend my honor and- most likely- do someone in, I wanted it to be someone at the Girl's School infirmary, namely the doctor who left me with a long vertical scar up my stomach and his assurance that I was never going to get myself in "the family way" again. "So you won't be raising up any babies on the State's dime, like your mother," the doctor had told me.

The matron rapped on the door with her knuckles and shouted out, "three minutes."

My father said, "Give me a name, girl, or I won't come back."

"It wasn't like that," I protested. "He said he was going to marry me…"

"Christ…girl, a man'll say anything he has to get at a woman…"

"So you've heard or so you know from experience?"

"I don't see no ring on your finger, Mona."

"My name's Aletta."

"Yeah, whatever, girl. What's your old man's name?"

Now it was my turn to lean back in my chair and look tough.

Hank warned me, "I told you, girl, I won't come back…"

"I'll tell them," I said. "I'll tell them who you are. You won't make to the parking lot. I bet your car's stolen, too, ain't it? I'll have them hold on to you while they run the plates. When they get you into County, you'll be the catch of the day."

The matron knocked again. This time, she opened the door a crack to let Hank and me know we were done.

"That's how you want it, is it, girl?"

"I won't let you hurt him over me. I saw what it did- what _you_ did to Mom, you bastard. She never forgave herself for those people…when she went raisin' hell with you."

Hank stood up. He didn't push in his chair. He walked past me, saying to the matron on his way through the door, "You hear that? She calls her own father a bastard. What kind of girl's school you got here?"

And then he came back to see me once a month until I was done in Oklahoma City.


	3. Chapter 3

SE Hinton owns the Outsiders.

Back to some characters you'll recognize in this chapter.

**Tulsa Queen**

Three-

I followed Darry back to the house that day, the week after the funeral, after we spent an hour downtown fixing things with the bank. The boys were still on winter break. He hadn't wanted to leave them home alone for too long.

"Eat something," he told me. "People keep bringing us food, and we're just not all that into eating. Eat something , if you want."

I went to the kitchen. I wasn't as interested in eating as I was in seeing the condition of the sink and stove. Everything was neat as a pin, just like Aunt Karen was still scrubbing it from beyond. Finding nothing to do there, I opened the fridge and got myself a beer. I went back out into the living room.

Darry raised an eyebrow at me.

"Did I drive you to drink?" He asked, and then, "Well, if you're having one, then I'm going to have one."

"Who's been cleaning?" I called back to him as I headed for the front room.

"Sodapop, if you'll believe that. It's all a sham, though. He's telling me he's not going back to school. He thinks he's going to get a job somewhere and keep house the rest of the time."

"That's bullshit," I said. "Tell him I'll come around and clean. Tell him to shut his trap and get back to school."

"Tell him yourself. He's around here somewhere. I've been his guardian for nine whole days, and already he doesn't listen to me."

"Maybe that's it, Darry," I told him. He came back with his beer and sat down across from me in his Dad's chair. It was harder to say what I'd intended having to look at him. "Maybe it hasn't been long enough. Maybe he's just fighting it now to make a diversion for himself. When it sinks in…"

Darry sighed.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"You want to sign those checks?" He wasn't mad, but he was ready to kick me out. Maybe he was going to cry and he sure wasn't going to do that in front of me.

"Yeah. Toss 'em here. Where's Pony?"

I was a year younger than Darry, and a couple older than Sodapop, but I got along with Ponyboy better than any of them. Maybe he looked up to me for some unfathomable reason. Maybe he admired my capacity to raise hell. Ponyboy was more of one to simmer in quiet. He had to work himself up to hell-raising, but it was an attribute that delighted him in other people.

Darry's face tightened. He seemed to take the question as an accusation.

"I don't know where he is. It's going to be a transition- him getting used to me keeping track of him."

"Maybe he's outside playing ball with that kid down the street…"

It was eighteen degrees outside, no kind of day for playing football, but I wanted to suggest something to keep Darry from being mad.

I asked, "What's his name again? The quiet one, the cute one?"

The door swung open as I said it, and one who entered- definitely not the quiet one- answered me, "The cute kid down the street? Why that's Keith Mathews, but you can call me Two-Bit, Lettie Barnett. How's it going, little sister?"

He strode right past me, having noted that Darry and I were holding beers, and headed for the kitchen.

"Pretty sure she meant Johnny, Two-Bit," Darry told him.

Two-Bit popped the cap off of his beer on the counter and came barreling back towards us.

"I beg to differ, Darrel. We both know Lettie thinks I'm cute as a June bug."

"June bugs are gross," I said.

From the corner of my eye, I caught a smile from Darry.

He knew Two-Bit and I had fooled around once or twice, starting out playing Seven Minutes in Heaven when we were in middle school and progressed some from there, before I got sent away. Given how Two-Bit could run his mouth, I was pretty sure everyone knew. It was one of the reasons I never stuck it out with him.

Two-Bit sat down next to me. I leaned forward as he draped his arm across the back of the couch. Darry bit back a laugh.

Two-Bit asked: "So, to what do we owe the honor of your presence, Lettie? I assumed that's what we're drinking to."

"My mom made Lettie and me co-beneficiaries," Darry told him. "Not a dime's going to leave this house without her knowing it."

Two-Bit, as squirrely as he could be, was deceptively smart. He didn't miss a beat.

"How'd your mom know? I mean, that y'all were going to need beneficiaries?"

"She didn't," I lied. "She was just planning ahead, just in case. You know Aunt Karen.."

Two-Bit shrugged.

Darry changed the subject. "You seen Ponyboy?"

"Not in a while."

Darry raised his eyebrows.

"God's honest truth, Darry. I ain't seen him since maybe…what time is it?"

"Two," I told him.

Two-Bit grinned. "Damn, y'all start drinking early around here. I think I like you people. Nah, I ain't seen him since maybe ten. He was heading out with Johnnycake somewhere."

"Tell me they weren't with Dally," Darry said.

"They weren't with Dally…?" Two-Bit popped up his eyebrow and tried to look sly. He failed. "Come on, Darrel. It's too early for them to get up to anything serious. They were probably just going to play some pinball or steal Baby Jesus ornaments out of people's yards…"

"Who would do something like that?" I asked him.

"Barbarians," Two-Bit said, grinning. "Although that's kind of what they get for leaving their Christmas stuff out for so long."

"Just how many Baby Jesus' you got stuffed in the trunk that car of yours?"

"Are you inviting yourself to take a ride in my car, Lettie?"

"Not in the trunk, dumbass."

"She's got some checks to sign," Darry said.

"And I got checks I got to sign."

"I see how it is," Two-Bit said. He wasn't the least bit hurt though. He set his half-empty bottle down on the coffee table and stood up. "I'm going to prowl around a little. If I run into Pony, I'll drag him home by the ear."

Darry mumbled thanks, and Two-Bit sailed out the door, letting it slam hard behind him. A picture fell off the mantel. The fish swirled in a frenzy around its bowl.

"You don't even be thinking about that," Darry said to me. He stood up to replace the picture. He held his hand against the side of the fish bowl. Like he was some kind of goldfish whisperer, the fish settled down.

"Thinking about what? Isn't he still in high school?"

"Oh, that's right. You got a preference for more mature men now."

I wanted to tell him to go fuck himself, but I couldn't do it to my own cousin whose parents were barely cold in the ground. Darry took advantage and waved a finger and grinned at me as he went to the next room to get the checkbook.


	4. Chapter 4

SE Hinton owns the Outsiders.

**Tulsa Queen**

Four-

I signed the checks and caught up to Two-Bit because I needed to get a little high, and I knew he'd be holding. He was waiting for me, as I'd figured he would be, sitting on the hood of his car and peeling the bark off of a stick he'd found. We went back and forth over whether or not I had to smoke a joint with him or could I just pay him for it and go home. I gave in because I didn't feel like going home and being high around my mother.

We got in his car. I rolled while he drove.

"I ain't seen much of you. What's shaking up in Brumly?" He asked.

"Is anything ever? Christ, half the town burned down last summer. Grass fire, bootleggers, kids with matches. I don't think anyone even cared to ask."

"What about your boy- the one you get sent away over? Must be the whole population of your fair city shows up to rodeo and rumble now and again, but I ain't seen him."

"He's in Atoka. I guess. He was there. I don't really know now."

"What was his name again?"

"Hartley. Hart."

"Yeah, Hart. That's cute."

Two-Bit took the joint from me, inhaled, and held it. He'd no sooner exhaled before he was asking me another question I didn't want to answer:

"So, Hart. Yeah, so what does a girl do when she gets her heart broke by a guy named Hart?"

"Take a look. I'm doing it."

He grinned and handed the joint back.

"Here. Do some more. Maybe it'll make you more congenial."

The sun emerged from behind the clouds so suddenly that it spooked us both. Two-Bit squinted and cursed. He put on the brakes what I thought was a little premature for the upcoming intersection. The car coasted a few yards, though, and stopped right where it should have. Two-Bit looked both ways down the cross-street, and then asked me:

"You need another drink, Lettie Rae?"

"I thought we were looking for Ponyboy."

"We can do both."

"Pony don't drink. You ain't going to find him in any bar. I think you're meant to be headed to the bowling alley."

"There's beer at the bowling alley. If Pony and Johnny ain't there, then we'll hole up and have a drink. Regroup, come up with another plan."

I mumbled, "Whatever you say."

I was trying to keep my mind on finding my cousin, but my thoughts were starting to float every which way drifting towards anything more to do with Two-Bit. Since getting knocked up and put down in quick succession by Hart, I was gun shy about boys. I still wanted their company, but the idea of anyone touching me the way Hart had felt like a death sentence in a way that I couldn't explain without going into the reasons why.

Kids in Tulsa did pretty much everything but bowl at the bowling alley. There were a few pinball machines, if that was your thing. There was a bar to hang around and try to get someone who was old enough to buy for you. There was the actual bowling alley itself, the back half of which was covered in dark green carpet. It was like a landing strip where packs of kids prowled back and forth looking for a fling or a fight.

The air was hazy with cigarette smoke. Two-Bit took my hand and pulled me through the throng towards the pinball players. My first reaction was to jerk my hand back again. Two-Bit turned back to look at me. I expected some kind of guilt trip for my resistance. Instead, he put a finger to his lips and pointed- first to the pinball machine where I saw Ponyboy standing around with his friends, and then in a circular motion to signal we should flank them and take them by surprise.

I rolled my eyes at him, but half-heartedly began to circle around to the right. Two-Bit reached them before I did. He pounced on the kid playing pinball and shook him by the shoulders. The dark-haired kid let go of the bumpers and lost the ball.

"Dang, Two-Bit," I heard him say.

"Serves you right, Johnny Cade, you miscreant. You're contributing to the delinquency of a minor even more minor than yourself."

Johnny looked confused. Ponyboy saw me, though, and pushed himself away from the wall.

"Did Darry send you?"

"Hi to you too. No, Darry sent Two-Bit. I'm just along for the ride."

When I said it, I became aware of how stoned I was. I wondered if my speech sounded slow to them, or if it was just me. I felt like they were all staring at me. Turned out, aside from Pony, the only person staring at me was a short, bottle-blonde girl who was hanging on the shoulder of a mean-looking, little goatroper. I recognized him from around my cousin's house.

"Who's she?" The girl asked her cowboy.

I only halfway wondered the same about her. Everything about her was little except for her hair and her tits. Most likely, she could bring the claws out for a cat fight, but I'd done a whole lot more than that at the Girl's School. I could throw real punch. I couldn't bring down guys like Two-Bit or Darry, but I figured I could knock a little girl like this one into the stratosphere.

"Their cousin," was all her boyfriend told her. He didn't know much more about me, but he more than likely knew my name. A guy like him remained evasive to keep his girl jealous and paranoid.

"Aletta," I said to the girl, just for the sake of ruining the game. "I'm Pony's cousin. I'm down from Brumly."

The girl made a face. The mention of Brumly didn't exactly bring out the smiles.

"Ain't _you_ got a name?" I asked her. "I know y'all think we're a bunch of hillbillies up there, but at least we're polite enough to introduce ourselves."

"Sylvia." She damned-near spit it out.

"Nice to meet you, Sylvia."

I turned to Ponyboy and Johnny.

"How long y'all been here?"

"Maybe an hour?" Pony said.

"Or maybe not?" I asked him.

He shrugged and exchanged glances with Johnny. Wherever they'd been and whatever they'd been up to, it had involved the cowboy. I could only guess he was the Dally that Darry had wanted them not to be with.

"Y'all eat?" I asked Pony.

They answered me in union: "No."

I shot Dally a look to let him know that he was on his own there. I tugged Ponyboy away from the pinball machine and motioned for Johnny to follow me. Two-Bit hung back with Dally and Sylvia, and I was relieved for it. I didn't have enough cash on me to feed all of them, and I didn't feel real inclined to put what I had towards feeding a girl who looked at me the way Sylvia did. I knew a little of Johnny's history, though, and I had no problem buying him a burger.

I let them order their own food at the bar and then added on a bottle of Grain Belt. A look back towards the pinball machine told me Two-Bit and Dally were talking about me. Sylvia did not appear to enjoy the conversation focused on any girl other than her. She excused herself to go, I guessed, to the ladies room. Neither Dally or Two-Bit acknowledged her going.

I told Ponyboy to wait at the bar for the food and to keep his mitts off of my beer. He grumbled something to Johnny about not getting between me and a bottle.

I poked a finger in his direction and winked as I walked away, telling them, "And don't you forget it neither."

Without being too obvious (although what the hell did I know, I was pretty stoned), I followed Sylvia into the ladies room. I found her standing at the mirror, adjusting her hair. In my state of mind, I was tempted to poke it over to one side just to make her have to do it all over again. I forced myself to behave and to remember why I'd followed her in the first place.

"Sylvia, right?"

She wrinkled her nose at me without actually turning away from the mirror to face me.

"What are you on?" She asked.

"A little of Rogers County's finest, I'd guess," I said and brushed the comment aside. I asked her, "How long y'all been here?"

"If you're checking up on your little cousin, why don't you ask your little cousin?"

"Because I'm asking you. Because he's standing out there in the shadow of your old man and Two-Bit. He's not going to give up his buddy."

"You think I'm going to give up my boyfriend, though?"

"The thought had crossed my mind. I don't need a blow-by-blow account of your entire afternoon. I just want to know that Ponyboy ain't getting up to anything unbecoming."

"Like you've obviously been doing?"

"Pretty much," I said. She was getting on my nerves something awful, but I was beginning to suspect that she was dragging it out because she didn't actually have anything to tell me; she just liked playing at holding something over me.

I told her, "Of course, if I was to find out that Pony was headed down the wrong path, I'd have to take him back with me for sure. Then you could have Dally all to yourself."

"I'd still have Johnny. He sticks to Dally like glue. I swear, he likes Dally better than I do most days."

"Yeah, Dally looks like one hell of a charmer."

"Says the girl who blew in here with Two-Bit."

I shrugged. "What me and Two-Bit are doing ain't your business, little girl. Just like what you and Dally...and Johnny...do ain't mine. I only care about my cousin."

"Well, put your worried mind to rest," Sylvia said. She let her hair be, and opened up her purse to look for lipstick. I could see a flask inside. When I stood back and crossed my arms across my chest, she continued: "That? Yeah, don't worry about that. Ponyboy does not partake in that or anything else. He's such a child."

I skipped the obvious retort about the pot calling the kettle black because it suddenly made me very sad to remember what sixteen was like- when you had to work to get someone to buy you a beer, and when nothing bad had happened yet so you didn't think it ever could.

"Thanks," I told her. "Let's keep it that way."

I left Sylvia to her make-up and went back out into the bowling alley.


	5. Chapter 5

SE Hinton owns the Outsiders.

**Tulsa Queen**

Five-

Two-Bit and I split the beer and got a little more silly. We stood against the bar- me standing against him with his hands resting on my waist. I found myself laughing at stupid stuff. I caught Pony and Johnny casting baffled looks our way as we got to snuggling up a little more.

"Hey, Aletta," Two-Bit said. "They look pretty safe and sound to me. You want to take a ride around the block?"

"What's around the block?"

"Well, if we go all the way around it, it's this. We're right back to where we started."

"So, we'll come back to where we started? How long are we going to be gone?"

He shrugged, squeezing my waist on one side.

"That's up to you. Say the word, and we'll come right back."

I took a look around the bowling alley. Pony and Johnny were enthralled again with their pinball. Dally looked like he was working at cajouling Sylvia into much the same as Two-Bit was me. One minute she was having it, and the next she wasn't so sure. Dally was getting impatient.

"We got to give Pony and Johnny a ride back. Those two…" I nodded at Dally and Sylvia. "…are going to boil over here in a minute. I just want to see that my cousin gets home."

"We can see to that," Two-Bit said. "Johnny, he'll probably stay here. He ain't going to want to go home. We can take Pony and then go out and about ourselves."

He wrapped his arm around my waist to pull me to him tighter. His hand rested and his fingers fanned out on my stomach. He couldn't feel it- that thick, ugly scar- but I could. Some days, it still hurt- although I didn't understand how it could since it had long-since healed. It made me feel a little sick thinking about- thinking about having to show it to someone in the daylight.

"We should just get him home," I told Two-Bit. "Then we can see how it goes."

There wasn't a ring of promise in my voice, and he knew it. Two-Bit drew his hands back and squeezed my shoulders instead.

"All right, then. Your call. Let's take him home to Big Brother."

I stepped away from him, but turned back to look up at him. He raised an eyebrow. Against even my stoned better judgement, I stood on my toes and kissed him. When I pulled away, he might have been blushing just a little. Maybe I was too.

I waved Ponyboy over rather than risk another confrontation with Sylvia. I could see Ponyboy's shoulders drop. He said something to Johnny, and then came over to meet Two-Bit and me with all the enthusiam of a puppy being dragged on a leash.

"Darry's worried," I said.

He rolled his eyes.

"Darry wasn't worried an hour ago? Took you guys long enough to make up your mind."

"Just for that, you get to give my car a push," Two-Bit told him.

He was trying to sound stern, but there was something giddy in his voice. I wrapped my arm around Pony's shoulders and we walked ahead of Two-Bit to the parking lot.

* * *

No sooner had Two-Bit left us alone on the curb in front of my cousin's house then Ponyboy started in with his own brand of over-protective cousinly behavior.

"What's up with you and Two-Bit?"

"Nothing," I told him. "Nothing's up."

"Doesn't look like nothing to me."

"Well, looks can be deceiving."

The kid wasn't even fourteen years old yet. I figured it was someone else's responsibility to have the conversation about how sometimes you just wanted someone to touch you and hold you but you didn't want to have to live out the rest of your days with them cooking their dinner and washing their clothes.

Ponyboy frowned.

"It looks like one of you is going to screw the other over, but I can't tell which is which. I don't know who to be mad at."

"There's no one to be mad at," I told him. "Not if we're both playing at the same game and we both know it."

He grinned and blushed a little.

"I just never seen a girl play Two-Bit the way I've seen him play girls."

"Yeah, it's a whole new era we're living in. Why don't you just go in the house?"

"Are you coming in?"

I planted a hand on my hip, and looked him in the eye. "What's _your_ game, little man? Are you planning to make me the buffer between you and Darry?"

"Sort of."

"And if I do it this time, how will you ever learn not to run off on him again?"

He gave me a disapproving frown.

"Dang, it's both of you," He moaned. "It hasn't been two weeks since...and both you and him are acting like you grew up into respectable citizens overnight."

"Darry may have actually been respectable before."

Ponyboy dropped his gaze to the floor. He'd been ten years old when I was sent to the Industrial School. I'm sure no one told him why at the time, and maybe no one had since. All he knew was that there was a dark cloud that hung over me- like a plague of locusts that I couldn't outrun.

"I'm sorry," he said, without having any idea why he may or may not have offended me.

"Then show a little respect," I took advantage and told him. "If not for me, than at least for him. He has to change in ways you can't even understand. Just don't make it any harder than it already is."

It was a mean thing to say, but I was feeling mean now. Not because I felt like Ponyboy was disrespecting me or because I even expected such a thing as respect from him. It was like I was already jonesing for a fix. I wanted to see Two-Bit again- pick up where we'd left off- but Ponyboy was right: it was just a game we were playing, and it wouldn't do to go changing the rules when the game was already on. It wasn't my turn to make the next move.

* * *

My mother was the pretty one, but she always played second fiddle to Aunt Karen.

She was sitting on the sofa in a house dress with her feet curled underneath her when I got home.

"Where did you go?" She asked.

"To see the boys. To see Darry."

"Did you get drunk with Darry?"

"A little, actually."

She twitched her nose a little and asked, "Did Darry turn you on too? That doesn't seem like him."

"No, Mom. That was after I left."

"Left with who? Or were you smoking that all by yourself? You know that's a sure sign you got a problem, Aletta, if you're doing it all by yourself."

I shook my head.

"Just a boy from the neighborhood. Didn't come to anything, if that's what you're worried about."

I think what my mother worried about more than anything was being left behind. She was afraid of me leaving her. She was afraid of her youth, and fun, and good times leaving her. She was so afraid of it as a young newlywed that she ran off with a criminal like Hank Spence, and she was still afraid of it all these years later.

She may have sounded like she was worried over my drinking and getting stoned, but really she was hurt because she wasn't in on it.

"So," she asked her first sensible question. "How are the boys?"

"Soda wants to drop out of school. I couldn't find him to weigh in on that."

"Darry's going to have his hands full."

I nodded. I wondered if my mother missed her sister. It was hard to tell. They didn't spend a lot of time together. Karen had grown up and got married and moved to Tulsa. My mother had done the same, then tanked that scene, and moved back to Brumly to take care of my grandparents. After they passed, she just stayed. The rent was cheap. She lived on the premise that no one would ever want to marry her or me because of our sordid pasts.

"I'm going to keep going down there regular, Ma," I told her. "Soda's got this idea that he's going to take over the housework. Maybe if I beat him to the punch, he'll get bored and go back to school."

"I'll bet it'll take more than that to convince him. That boy's stubborn like his old man."

She meant stupid- stupid like his old man. My mom had a complicated relationship with my Uncle Darrel. She'd dated him before Aunt Karen, and she had a million reasons made up not to like him to cover for the fact that she was really still pissed off that he ditched her. Neither Uncle Darrel or Soda was stupid. "Flighty" was maybe a better word. Once upon a time, my uncle had been known to party, and thus he took up with my mom. It was when he met my Aunt Karen that he changed his mind about that and decided he wanted to be a family man instead. My mom never seemed to inspire that sort of behavior in anyone.

"Well, if I keep at it...Darry and I can work on him."

My mom stretched and pulled her legs out from underneath her like she was getting ready to stand. I knew that body language though. What she was getting ready to do was give me a lecture.

"You go down there and do that, Aletta, but you go down there to help out Darry, not so you can keep seeing this boy whose got you drinking and getting high as a kite in the middle of the afternoon. I love Karen's boys, but some of their friends...I know boys in that neighborhood, and you're better off staying away. I'd think you be able to spot that kind by now."

Maybe I could, maybe I couldn't. Maybe I was just like her, and I could spot it coming a mile away and would do everything I could to be planted in its path when it came barreling towards me. Turns out, Two-Bit was the least of my worries. My next visit to Tulsa would find me grounded in the flightline of the kind of boy my mother didn't even know she was warning me about.


	6. Chapter 6

SE Hinton owns them.

Tulsa Queen

Six-

I didn't see them huddled down over a crate in the alley, holding the burning cigarettes to each other's skin. Maybe if I had, I wouldn't have come after Tim Shepard the way I did when I saw him haul his little brother and Ponyboy to the mouth of the alley by their collars and shove them onto the sidewalk.

That's the first I ever saw of either of the Shepard boys, and I didn't care who they were or how they solved things in their family. In my family, we didn't go tossing the little kids around that way.

I was just leaving the DX station where Sodapop was working part-time and was trying to talk the owner into letting him go full-time. I'd had to go there to even get an audience with Soda. My mother might have thought he was stupid, but he just wasn't the booksmart kind like Darry and Ponyboy. He was intuitive as all-get-out, though, and he seemed to know when I was going to be coming around and what I wanted to talk to him about when I did. He had successfully avoided me for almost two weeks. I'd had to go to the DX and yell across the counter and into the shop at him. All the while, he'd stayed put beneath a Ford Falcon that he and a sneering coworker of his had jacked up over an oil pan. Needless to say, I was already fit to be tied when I left the place and found Tim Shepard getting rough with Ponyboy.

"The hell is wrong with you two?" He was saying to them. "I oughta knock your damned heads together."

He had a good six inches of height on me. After eighteen months in the girl's school, I had developed a pretty good sense of how to size up an opponent. Physically, there was no way I could take on this guy, and he was the kind of guy that I could stand on the street and curse at all day long and he'd never take me seriously. The only thing I had going for me was the element of surprise. Guys like him hate to be surprised in front of people, especially if it's people they've deemed to be smaller and weaker.

So I picked up a bottle and I threw it at him. I missed on purpose. I didn't want to hurt him, just snap his head around. It worked- the bottle sailed past his head and shattered against the wall of the building behind him.

I heard him curse. Hell, all three of them cursed.

"What the hell?" He shouted.

"Yeah, what the hell, you creep?" I yelled back. "What're you doing throwing around a couple of kids like that?"

He nodded to Ponyboy's partner in crime. "He's my brother. I'll do whatever I goddamned want with him."

"Well, the other one's my cousin. You got a problem with him, then you gotta problem with me."

It was a stupid thing to say. The comeback was too easy, too obvious. He cracked a sly grin, looked me up and down, and said, "Sweetheart, I'd love to make you my problem."

I clicked my tongue at him disgust. I walked to the mouth of the alley, and Ponyboy slouched up to my side. He was holding his hand low and slightly behind his back so that I wouldn't see the burn.

"Come on, Aletta," he said. "Let's just go."

"Oh, I'm sorry. Am I embarrassing you?"

He groaned. "Yeah. A little."

"What the hell is this guy talking about? Why's he going to knock your heads together?"

"We were just fooling around."

"Fooling around's about right," Tim said, walking towards us with his brother in tow behind him. "Like the couple of damned fools that you are. Show her, Curtis. As if it wasn't stupid enough to be smoking cigarettes at the age of ten...show her what you do with 'em instead."

"I ain't ten," Ponyboy said, and then winced like he'd surprised himself by talking back. It didn't surprise me a bit, but then I didn't yet know Tim's reputation for declaring himself the right hand of the Lord.

"Show me, genius," I said.

Ponyboy held up his index finger. It was beginning to blister, but I'd burned myself worse pulling bread out of the oven with a towel instead of a potholder.

"What about him?" I nodded past Tim towards his brother.

The brother looked defiant, or tried. He shoved his hands in his jacket pockets, which obviously pained him when he curled his burnt finger into his palm.

Tim clapped him on the back of the head.

"Show her, dipshit. Maybe you'll get lucky and she'll kiss it for you and make it all better."

The little brother held out his hand to me.

Tim told me, "I wouldn't kiss it, if I was you. I can about guess where else his hand has been."

"Jesus, Tim," his brother said. He held out his hand to me. The burn looked slightly worse than Ponyboy's.

"Well, good work, Pony," I said. "I declare little what's-his-face here to be the winner. And that means, once again, I get to chauffer you home to prevent you from doing any further damage to yourself."

"Jesus, Lettie," he said, trying to for all the world to sound tough like Tim's little brother. And not fooling anyone.

Tim snickered. "Lettie, huh? You're Lettie?"

"Yeah? Who's begging to know?"

"Tim Shepard, although I wouldn't say I was begging. I do gotta say it's an honor to meet the girl Two-Bit says can roll a joint like San Francisco beatnik, and knows how to turn him inside out a hundred ways besides."

"Shut up," I told him.

Next to me, I could feel Ponyboy shift on his feet. Whether if was because he was embarrassed by Tim's innuendo or nervous because I'd rebuked it, I wasn't sure. Tim's little brother, however, was suddenly all smiles.

"She's got a helluva left curve too," the brother said, referring to my throwing the bottle.

"Yeah, she's got all kinds of curves, looks to be," Tim said. "Little Curtis, where you been hiding this one?"

Tim's addressing him directly rattled Ponyboy. His voice was barely audible:

"I ain't been hiding her. She comes and goes whenever she wants."

"Good to know," Tim said. "You think maybe, it you and him promise get on home, she'd come and go with me for a while?"

"I'd say your chances are a lot better if you ask me directly instead of trying to broker a deal through my cousin," I told him.

I don't know why I said it other than I was mad at Two-Bit for, again, talking out of school about him and I. I had no doubt that Tim would spread the same kind of tales- and probably embellish them just as much- if I went for a ride or took a walk with him or whatever else he was suggesting.

"Ponyboy," Tim said. He paused and shook his head. "Jesus, what kind of name...Ponyboy, you can get yourself home alright, can't you? Don't make your cousin worry now. Get a move on."

Ponyboy leaned into me, keeping his eyes on Tim.

"I'm going to the DX. I'm going to get Soda and Steve."

"Try not to burn yourself on the way," I told him.

Tim's little brother piped up: "What about me?"

"What about you?" Tim said. "How long do you think I can leave you unattended before you hold another part of your body to an open flame? You go on and get too."

"I ain't going home."

"I ain't tellin' you to. I'm just telling you to get."

All the while, Tim kept his eyes locked on me. I couldn't hold his gaze. I had to keep looking away, rolling my eyes so as to appear annoyed.

And I was annoyed, but with myself. And Two-Bit. And Ponyboy, who I figured was somehow to blame for getting me into this.

"Take it easy then, Lettie," Pony said. "Have yourself a great afternoon before Soda and Two-bit and Darry come looking for you."

"I ain't ten years old, Ponyboy," I said. "I don't need anybody looking after me to keep me from hurting myself."

"I ain't ten…Damnit, come on, Curly."

Ponyboy slouched away towards the DX to tell on me. Tim's little brother looked to Tim for approval, got nothing, and took off after Ponyboy. I was left standing on the curb with Tim Shepard, surrounded by a minefield of broken glass.

"Well, what is it you're suggesting we do?" I asked him.

"Hadn't really thought that far ahead," he said. "But if we're about to bring all hell and high water down upon us, I guess we'd better make it good."


	7. Chapter 7

SE Hinton owns Tim and Buck.

a/n: Oklahoma had (and still has, to an extent) some of the goofiest liquor laws on the planet. At the time of The Outsiders, women could purchase beer by the bottle at 18, but men had to be 21. So, Lettie can buy beer, but none of the boys in the book can- legally. If someone buys it for them, however, they can consume because there was no law against under age consumption.

**Tulsa Queen**

Seven-

Five minutes in Tim's company told that I had no reason to worry that Sodapop and his friend Steve were going to come storming the fort to defend my honor. Tim Shepard was out of their league and then some. Darry was most certainly going to give me a piece of his mind when he heard about it from Ponyboy, but Darry had more pressing things on his plate than chasing me and Tim Shepard around Tulsa, namely his job and the bills it barely paid.

So, when Tim shoved his hands in his jacket pockets and said, "It's cold as balls, let's go for a ride," I shrugged and walked with him to his car. He didn't say another word to me until we got inside and he got the motor running. Then, it was only to say, "there ain't no heat".

"We're not out in the wind," I said, and he didn't reply.

The radio worked, but the song- "Nowhere to Run"- displeased him. He punched at the buttons, and got crop reports and Connie Smith.

I told him, "Try the College."

"What- the fuckin' Bible Beaters?"

"No, UT. Does Oral Roberts even have a station?"

"Christ, if you knew the answer to that, I'd have to take a sharp left turn and eject you from my car."

He was halfway grinning when he said it. He gestured for me to take over with the radio. I turned it all the way down to the left end of the dial, and found the student station at Tulsa University playing Franciose Hardy. I sat back and waited for the inevitable complaint.

"This ain't in English," Tim said.

"Correct."

"What the hell's the use of listening to it if it ain't in English?"

I smirked a little. "'Tequila's' not in English."

"There's only one word, and I know what it means." He paused, and then said, "You wanna get a drink?"

"Sure. Where at?"

"Somewhere that's playing music in a language I understand. Do _you_ know what she's saying?"

I shook my head, and looked away from him out the window. "The song's called 'Pas Gentille'... 'Bad Boy'".

"That sounds about right," Tim said, and took a right onto East Admiral, which meant we were headed out of town. I kept quiet and listened to Francoise and the sound of the windows rattling in the cold.

* * *

We were both about frozen solid when we reached Buck's Roadhouse out by the stockyards. I leaned in and shoved the door of Tim's Buick open. I heard him click his tongue in annoyance.

"I know enough to open a door for a girl," he said.

I trudged ahead of him across the gravel parking lot. When we reached the front door, I stopped and waited for him to open it. He just rolled his eyes at me and gestured for me to open it myself.

"Quit screwin' around, Lettie. It's cold out here."

Inside, as our eyes were adjusting to the light and heavy air filled with smoke, a voice greeted us from behind the bar:

"You ain't old enough to drink in here, Shepard."

"But I brought my mom," Tim yelled back. He said to me, "You wanna buy me a drink? Buck got busted for serving minors last week. He's a wee bit uneasy."

I said, "Maybe he thinks you're a narc."

"That ain't even funny," Tim said. "You were cute giving my little brother shit and opening your own doors and all, but that's a step too far."

I went to the bar asked for a couple of beers.

The bartender, a lanky goatroper type with missing teeth and a wandering eye, asked me, "They both for you, I suppose?"

"Yeah, I'm thirsty."

He handed over wto bottles of Grain Belt to me. I paid him and went looking for Tim.

I found him in a corner table sitting with Dallas Winston and a girl who wasn't Sylvia. Tim shoved a chair away from the table for me with the toe of his boot.

"Meetin' you halfway," he said.

I sat down and nodded to Dallas. Since both he and the girl also had beers, I guessed that she was at least eighteen, if not older. She was a similar make to Sylvia- all tits and Aquanet, and she didn't look the least bit happy to see me.

"I know you," she said.

"Really? I coulda sworn your name was Sylvia, but now that I'm closer I think my eyes were deceiving me."

Dally, who was leaning back against the wall in his chair, let it drop down onto all four of its legs. The girl jumped a little. Neither Tim nor I twitched.

"Aletta," Dally said in a low, measured voice. "This is Janine."

"Hi, Janine," I said.

Invoking Sylvia's name had done nothing to improve my standing with Janine. If it had been her intention to only be evasive before, now she felt it necessary to spill what it was she knew about me.

"My cousin knew you in Oklahoma City," she said. "You and her was locked up together."

"I didn't know anyone in Oklahoma City. I made a point of not knowing anyone."

"She told me why you were there, too."

Now Tim and Dally were interested. They both knew that I'd been to the industrial school, but- for my mother's sake- I typically kept the nature of my crime pretty close to my chest.

For whatever reason, Tim shut our little snit down.

"Damn, Lettie, why can't you get along with anybody? What the hell's in the water up there in Brumley? You wanna dance or shoot some pool before I'm pulling y'all's claws out of one another's hair?"

"You really know how to romance a girl, Tim."

"Show's what you know," he said and stood up. "Come on. This song's in English. Pretty sure they're singing about all kinds of filthy things. Come dance with me, and I'll explain it to you."

He didn't wait for a reply. He yanked at my arm as he walked past. When I stood up to follow him he pulled me in front, steering me as I walked backwards towards the empty dance floor. Out of sight of Dally and Janine, he was shaking his head and laughing.

"Goddamn, little girl, I like you. Two-Bit likes you, sure enough. Janine...she does not like you."

Patsy Cline was midway through "Leaving On Your Mind". Tim pulled me a little closer to him than I would've preferred for a first dance. If I looked up at him, we were close enough to kiss, and the thought even crossing my mind made me nervous. There was something fascinating and yet at the same time revolting about the scar that cut through his eyebrow and across his temple. Whatever tore into him had just missed the dark brown eye, and the thought made me shiver a little.

"Still cold, kid?" He asked me. I didn't answer but he pulled me closer anyway. I could feel the snaps on his shirt and his chin resting on the top of my head. When he spoke to me again, he ducked his head so that our foreheads met.

"So, you going to regale me the tale or what?"

"What tale?"

"The tale of what got you that vacation to Oklahoma City."

I shook my head.

"I did my time. I don't matter anymore."

"Sure about that? Janine sure got you rattled when she brought it up."

"She didn't have me rattled."

Tim chuckled a little. His nose brushed against mine.

"Whatever you say, Sugar Ray. Whatever it was, you were gonna shut her up over it."

"Whatever it was, she just needed to shut up. Song's over."

I pulled back, but he didn't let go of me. I looked up at him, and he looked back at me, and-right then- I knew that he knew. At the very least, he knew that girls only got sent away over a short list of things, and most of those were what were called status crimes- stuff that ceased to matter once you became an adult: drinking, running away, truancy. In spite of my best efforts, I was reacting in a way that didn't fit any of those.

"There's another song coming," Tim said. He waited, still holding me, until Dolly Parton kicked in. Then he released me just long enough to spin me around once and reel me back. I knew he'd see right through me if I tried lying, but I had another story for him that I knew would be distracting enough to save me.

"When I talk about it, someone always goes and says I'm just like my dad," I told him. "And he's supposed to be on death row."

"Supposed to be?"

"He cut out from Macalester when I was a little kid. Vanished into the hills, but he made himself a little bit famous doing it."

"Well, whatever he did, he's better at it than you are. At least he escaped. You said you sat out your time."

"How much time did you sit in the reformatory before you got old enough to send to big boy jail?"

Tim smirked and paused to think about it.

"Hell, I don't know. Didn't ever get sent 'til we moved to Tulsa. Before that, all I ever did was run away from Concho and Chilocco, and they'd send me right back. Got picked up here for the first time when I was, maybe, fifteen. Sat in big boy jail that night, thank you very much. Done enough time in the reformatory to get dropped from school. Went to Crabtree when I was seventeen and half. Got to fight grass fires and grow okra until I turned eighteen. Christ, okra. I guess it wouldn't be punishment if they let us grow strawberries."

I sighed. It seemed like a million years ago that I was locked up. When Tim described it, it sounded like it all happened so fast- his high school years gone- and nothing to show for it but a fire fighting certificate and bragging rights to having been in adult prison as a minor.

Before I could ruminate about it further, the door opened and light and cold wind flooded in from outside.

Tim looked up and said, "Damn, and I was just getting warmed up."

Then I heard Buck again yell, "Y'all ain't old enough to drink in here," and I knew there was going to be trouble.


	8. Chapter 8

The Outsiders belongs to SE Hinton.

**Tulsa Queen**

**Eight-**

It disappointed me somewhat- that when I pulled away from Tim Shepard on the dance floor, he just let me go. I looked up at him, my eyes full of poison darts, and he was looking past me at whoever had come through the door. He already had his left hand on his back pocket, ready for the fight that he assumed he was coming. He had it all wrong, though. He should have guessed it would be coming from me.

"Who's attention were you trying to get?" I asked him. "Did it work out like you wanted it?"

For just a second, he broke his gazed and looked at me strangely. He blinked. I shook my head and turned to meet whoever was about to come down on me. When I saw him, I had to suppress a smile. Tim might have expected a fight from my cousin Sodapop- even if it was one Soda had no hope of winning- but I knew I could knock him down with a few choice words spoken with purpose in front of a room full of his peers.

"Jesus, Lettie…" He started.

"Shut your mouth. Just shut it now, and think real hard, Soda." I went for the jugular. I didn't ever believe he was dumb, but he did and it invoking that was quickest way to cut him down. "Think hard, and try not to hurt yourself doing it. Or would it be quicker if I just explained it to you? You're sixteen. You're in a bar. You're about to start a fight with a guy who has a knife. Clearly, there's a phone around here somewhere because you wouldn't have known where to find me unless someone- I'm guessing Dally- called you and told you. The cops are already keeping an eye on this place for serving minors. If there isn't one in plain clothes in here already, I'm sure all that needs to be done is for someone to pick up that phone. You got it, little man?"

"I ain't afraid of the cops," he said. Soda could say anything- recite the "Gettysburg Address"- and sound like he was pouting about it.

"Really? You afraid of DHS? You afraid of jazzing up their little arrangement that keeps you and Pony out of a boy's home? Let 'em come, then, and see how fast Ponyboy gets tossed in a bunkhouse full of next year's habitual killers and bank robbers."

Sodapop's shoulders slumped. He stopped coming closer. I could see from the look in his eyes that I'd done exactly as I'd intended: I'd shoved a proverbial knife in his heart, and it was hurting me about as much as it was him.

I said, "You got a car? I'd guess if you walked here you'd have had time to come up with a better plan than just storming the joint all on your lonesome."

"Well, Dal's here."

Behind me, I heard Tim snort a laugh. Dally's allegiances, I suspected, were with whoever was winning. In this case, they should have been with me.

"You got a car, Soda?" I asked him again.

"Steve's, yeah."

"And Steve just let you come in here alone...relying on Dally?"

"I didn't tell him why...he just let me have the car."

I nodded. I had misjudged that- Steve really was that kind of a friend to Soda.

I asked: "You think you could give me a ride back to mine? It's still around the block from the DX. I promise I'll let you give me whatever little sermon it is you made up in your head on the way here. Unless it's all meant to be directed at this asshole."

I jerked my head back towards Tim.

"Hey," Tim said. "I'm perplexed. When did I become the asshole?"

"When's your birthday, again, Shepard?" I heard Dally yell from his corner. "I'd say sometime on that day in 1946."

Tim mumbled, "Christ," and then took a step towards me again. He put his hand on my shoulder and I shrugged him off. I turned to face him, keeping myself between him and Sodapop.

Tim threw his hands up and widened his eyes in exasperation.

"Who were you trying to get a rise out of, Shepard?" I asked. "Who were you using me as bait for? Him? Did you have an actual plan there, or is this just your idea of a fun way to pass an afternoon?"

"I did not...Jesus, I thought _we_ were passing an afternoon…"

"Save it," I told him, and then- and I have no idea why I said it, "because you owe me a beer."

I turned back to Sodapop and led him out the door by the arm. The air had gotten colder, and I winced when the wind hit me.

"Tell me you left that car running," I said.

"At this place, not a chance."

"Does the heat work?"

He grinned. "Like the fires of Hell itself. Everything on Stevie's car works. You could about take Stevie's car to space."

He jumped a couple of steps ahead of me so that he could open the passenger door. I slid in, and he closed it behind me. Once behind the wheel, he put the key in the ignition and then turned the heat on full-blast as if to prove it to me.

"Probably a good thing you hauled me out of there," he said. "Shepard would've turned me into sausage meat. Sure wish I could be a fly on the wall now, though."

"Why's that?"

Soda laughed. "You know he's gonna tune Dally up. That'll probably be more fun for them. Him and Dally's a little more evenly matched, I hate to admit."

"Just drive," I told him. "One of us way in over our heads is enough for the afternoon."

Instead of chiding me about my choice of company, Soda chattered about all the fights and rumbles they'd had with Tim Shepard and his gang. Whether he intended it to be a cautionary tell or just couldn't keep from running his mouth, I had no idea. What did become clear to me was that my own pathology ran twice as deep, and just as stupid.

There was something about Tim Shepard, something that made me want to be close to him. He was tall, dark, and handsome but at the same time covered in barely-healed wounds that everyone could see, but no one would dare bring up. He'd go down some day, trying like the devil to do the right thing in the wrongest way possible. He looked eighteen-going-on-nineteen and one hundred years old at the same time. The tattoos on his fingers and the ones that peeked out from under his sleeves were every one done in a jailhouse- they were deep blue and looked like they may have been written out by second graders. He looked, every inch of him, like a crazy person.

He looked a helluva a lot like my father.

"Sodapop?" I said.

"Yeah?"

"Please don't drop out."

"It's a done deal, Lettie. Parker says I can go full-time. I just gotta turn my books in and clean out my locker. Not like I was ever going to to college like Darry anyway."

I snuck a look at him out of the corner of my eye. His voice trailed off just then, and now his mouth was set hard trying to keep from sobbing. We both knew Darry wasn't going back to college now.

"If I could help you out some…" I started, but he cut me off.

"Lettie, I want to do it. It's like...don't take this wrong, but it's like an opportunity. I was never any good in school, and now I can do something else because we need me to do it. I never wished anything like this- like Mom and Dad- but now at least I can be good for something."

"I just don't want you to feel like you're stuck," I told him. "I know how that feels."

Soda shook his head.

"It ain't the same, Lettie," he said. "What happened with Mom and Dad, it just happened, but I have a chance to make it into something that's okay."

He must have known he had said something wrong because he didn't say another word until we got to my car. I didn't say anything either until we pulled up behind it, and I got out. Then all I said was, "I'll see ya".

I knew what he meant- what the difference was between him and I. Soda figured his parent's dying was an act of God or cruel twist of fate, but- to him- what happened with me was all my fault. I didn't have the words or the energy to argue with him, and he'd know for himself soon enough.


End file.
